Timbaland Presents Shock Value

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"2 Man Show," the epilogue of Timbaland Presents Shock Value, involves 24 men and women. The title refers to Timbaland and Elton John. John, despite being Elton John, doesn't sing on the song, but he does play some loose piano. Most of the vocals are left to Timbaland, who improvises with a nonstop series of directions, comments, and grunts. He participates in some nonchalant call-and-response singing as well. It's a relaxed way to close an exhausting album, and it's also an odd way to utilize Elton John and a 19-person choir. While the song is an extreme example, it does illustrate the inexplicable and intermittently unpredictable nature of an album that would be more accurately titled Timbaland Presents Slight Confusion or Timbaland Presents an Uneven Mess.
The reigning producer of R&B and rap since 1996, the year of Ginuwine's "Pony" and Aaliyah's "If Your Girl Only Knew," Timbaland has amassed piles of ingenious and commercially successful releases. Due to his work on Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous" and Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack," two of the least-avoidable pop singles released in 2006, his profile has never been higher. Consequentially, there has never been more anticipation for one of his own albums. His three albums with sidekick Magoo, in addition to the solo-proper Tim's Bio, each had measurable amounts of hype around their release dates. A new level of visibility, combined with a lot of eclectic star power and a couple silly beefs, has turned Shock Value into a major release.
If you haven't read any interviews with Tim from the past few years, or if you missed some of the more telling hints, such as his work on Brandy's Coldplay-sampling "Should I Go," there could be some shock involved while listening to the album for the first time. Although he has continued to contribute beats for MCs -- Young Jeezy's "3 a.m.," Snoop Dogg's "Get a Light," and Redman's "Put It Down" are a few recent examples -- Tim has frequently said that he is bored with rap and into rock, and here he takes the opportunity to reach beyond R&B, rap, and straight-up pop. "Throw It on Me," with the Hives (a good-time garage rock band from Sweden), is a frisky, careening number that must have taken all of ten minutes to put together. A remix of "Apologize," a ballad by OneRepublic (a band that might soundtrack the next season of Grey's Anatomy, or the imaginary annex between Abercrombie & Fitch and The Gap), incorporates an unobtrusive Timbaland beat and some distant vocal accents. With She Wants Revenge (a bad-time faux-British synth duo) and Fall Out Boy (you probably know about them), Tim is an interloper who takes part in songs that wouldn't be worse off without his presence. It's most jarring to hear him as a temporary member of the typically sullen She Wants Revenge, where his downcast verses give way to Justin Warfield's heavily affected drone.
The four songs involving the rockers are the only ones that have the potential to shock, and they're bundled together during the last quarter of the album, so it's not as if they're even being emphasized. Otherwise, Shock Value is similar in setup to Diddy's certifiably flawed and maliciously (and/or unjustly) panned Press Play, a sprawling but often pleasurable album involving so many MCs, singers, and studio hands that a head count would rival that of the sessions for "We Are the World.